Collective Bargaining by Code
The term describes the improvised political practice of AI-affected workers who possess specific grievances but lack formal institutions for their negotiation. The artists filing class-action lawsuits, the actors striking over likeness replication, the writers petitioning against the use of their work in training data, the engineers leaving companies to raise public safety concerns — each is engaged in an activity that, at the level of structural function, performs what Thompson identified in the eighteenth-century crowd: the assertion of interests that formal governance refuses to acknowledge. The strength of the practice is speed and responsiveness. The weakness is fragility: each action compels a moment of attention without creating the durable institutional structure through which interests are represented continuously over time.
In the AI Story
The phenomenon differs from traditional labor action in scale and coordination. The Authors Guild letter gathered ten thousand signatures in days, leveraging digital networks that permit rapid information-sharing and coordination. The Andersen lawsuit was filed within weeks of the discovery that artists' work had been scraped. The speed reflects the density of contemporary networks — and reveals the absence of the slower, durable institutions that would normally carry such grievances through negotiation.
Each form improvises from available materials. The class-action lawsuit uses an existing legal mechanism for an unprecedented structural challenge. The SAG-AFTRA strike extended traditional labor action into the novel territory of AI likeness replication. The open letter leverages the moral authority of signatories in lieu of institutional authority the signatories' profession lacks. In every case, the improvisation demonstrates both creativity and institutional absence.
The limitations follow the same pattern Thompson identified. The Andersen lawsuit will address copyright doctrine in a specific jurisdiction, not the global governance of AI training. The SAG-AFTRA contract protects SAG-AFTRA members only — a fraction of creative workers facing AI replication. The Authors Guild petition generated publicity but not legislation. Each action is a signal. None creates the structure that converts signals into sustained governance voice.
Thompson's framework predicts what the signals require: the building of durable institutional mechanisms through which the affected communities can continuously represent their interests. The trade unions of the nineteenth century were such mechanisms for the industrial working class; the equivalents for the digital working class have not yet been built, and the question of the moment is whether they will be built in time.
Origin
The concept extends Thompson's collective bargaining by riot into the digital economy, drawing on his structural analysis of how excluded workers assert interests when formal mechanisms are absent. The specific term appears in this volume but the analytical framework is Thompson's.
Key Ideas
Structural parallel to riot. Lawsuits, strikes, and petitions serve the same function that rioting served for the eighteenth-century crowd — asserting interests formal systems refuse to acknowledge.
Speed without durability. Digital networks enable rapid mobilization but do not produce the sustained institutional voice that negotiation over time requires.
Signal versus structure. Each action demonstrates the institutional deficit but does not, on its own, fill it.
Building phase. The present moment is analogous to the pre-union period of industrial labor — the phase when the need for institutions becomes visible but the institutions themselves have not yet been built.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, "Learning from Ricardo and Thompson" (Annual Review of Economics, 2024)
- Veena Dubal, "On Algorithmic Wage Discrimination" (Columbia Law Review, 2023)
- Trebor Scholz, Uberworked and Underpaid (Polity, 2016)